On Sunday, May 26 we held our final Opera Connect event of the season: Salome: Two Perspectives. In Cinema 3 of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, an international audience listened to, and watched, a fascinating trans-Atlantic discussion about Richard Strauss’s opera Salome.

CBC Radio’s Brent Bambury was on hand to interview celebrated Canadian filmmaker and director Atom Egoyan, who staged the COC’s production of Salome this spring. Participating from Oslo via live video-link was Norwegian stage director Stefan Herheim, whose own take on the opera is being mounted by the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet from May 25 to June 23. The directors were joined by opera scholars Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby (University of Oslo) and David Levin (University of Chicago).

Here are some highlights from the 2 hour event:

• Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby’s confession of her love affair with Salome!
• Atom Egoyan’s reflection that in re-visiting his production for the third time, he’s a different person today than he was in 1996 when the staging was new.
• Stefan Herheim’s expert summation of his incredibly complex, wide-ranging influences: everything from Marilyn Monroe to Broadway to Sci-Fi.
• Two great directors sharing their ideas about Salome …because they could!

Missed the event? You can stream the video here:

The After School Opera Program (ASOP) is a core outreach initiative of the Canadian Opera Company’s education and outreach activities. ASOP is an exciting community arts program that involves children between the ages of 7 and 12 in the creation and presentation of opera! Under the guidance of award-winning Canadian composer Dean Burry, choreographer, director, and conductor, Markus Howard, and other guest artists, participants learn all about the different elements that make up opera – music, drama, theatre and design – during the 10-week session. Along the way, they create and rehearse their own mini-production, and perform it before an audience of friends and family at the end of the program. Currently the program runs out of five community centres in Toronto, Etobicoke, North York, and in partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of East Scarborough. 

ASOP celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with a special celebration in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on June 13, 2013. Each week until then we’ll take special look back to some of the participants, artists, program partners, and volunteers who have made the program such a huge success over the years!

After several weeks of hustle and bustle, we have wrapped up the Summer Opera Camp program. Let’s take a look at the operas our extraordinary talented campers performed for us this summer, and learn why the participants left saying “I love opera!”

Some campers exhibited some serious conducting potential while leading the Kid Orchestra.